Introduction to Archaeology
Anthro 304 / ARY 301 Spring 1997Prof. Samuel M. Wilson
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas
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Emergence of Archaeology as a Discipline
- Human history as viewed by the Classical Authors
- European Renaissance (late 1300s to late 1500s)
- increasingly secular
- Columbian Voyages
- Expansion of Europe
- Protestant Reformation
- increasingly secular
- 18th Century accommodations to mounting evidence for an older earth
- John Frere, 1797 excavations in Suffolk
- Linnaeus (1707-1778)
- George Louis LeClerc (1707-1788) "Buffon"
- John Frere, 1797 excavations in Suffolk
- Idea of "UNIFORMITARIANISM"
- James Hutton, 1895 book Theory of the Earth
- James Hutton, 1895 book Theory of the Earth
- 19th Century emergence of the Scientific Method
- Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), theory of
"Catastrophism"
- Charles Lyell (1797-1875), alternative idea of
"transformism"; wrote Principles of Geology (1830
33). Precursor to evolutionary theory.
- Charles Darwin; natural selection as mechanism of
evolution
- conclusions: "old earth" and that principles that work today worked in the past.
- Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), theory of
"Catastrophism"
- Later 19th Century scholars on "Social Evolution"
- Louis Henry Morgan
- E. B. Tylor
- Herbert Spencer, diffusionist arguments
- Louis Henry Morgan
- 20th Century approaches
- Boas and empirical collection of data
- "Four-Fields" Anthropology
- Archaeology as Culture History
- Multidisciplinary Archaeology and concern with lifeways and adaptations
- Boas and empirical collection of data
- Early examples of "problem-oriented" research
- 1960s "New Archaeology" or "processual archaeology"